Adventures in fiction
writing techniques
Our starting point, the base of Plot-line
Mountain; conclu sion, the top. For our example, let's not start with a precon ceived need, just to show another way of doing it. This I noticed is how Elmore Leonard usually does it, put the protago nist in a given situation and goes from there.
Remember, we said plowing the Humvee straight to the top is bo-oringgg.
Our hero, Oself, Our Other Self, is out for a Sunday drive in the wilderness. His plan is to drive around Plot-line moun tain, but jams on the
brakes as the road is blocked by logs. Then an explosion blows away the bridge behind. And bullets start zinging off the Humvee's downhill fenders. See folks, a casual afternoon has turned into what's called, in Cliche City, a situation. Oself has a
sudden need, not only for a restroom, but to get the heck out by the only way open, over the mountain.
Oself slams the Humvee into gear, yanks the wheel and mashes the pedal, spraying gravel as he bounds over rocks and
humps and bumps, hell-bent on a yo-yo for the summit. Two hundred feet up, out of rifle range, he finds an old logging road and eases along with birds singing in filigree sunlight. All is right with the world. Oh,
yawn.
Oself barrels around a curve and over a crest, hiding a deep wash, and the Humvee soars like a lead eagle. It mashes nose- down into the gulch, and Oself, neglecting to wear a seatbelt, no doubt earning him a
traffic citation, crashes against the windshield. Birds now sing inside his head. The Humvee rolls downhill, backwards, toward a sheer drop-off. And the brakes don't work. And the door won't open. On either side. Oself hops in the back and by
punching and kicking and cursing and-- when all else fails--praying, breaks open the tailgate. He dives out pancake-flat into a bed of thorns. The Humvee scrunches over him and plunges off the cliff. Oself waits, and waits, waits. A crunch of metal
meeting stone, followed by an explosion, disturbs the idyllic day. A black cloud rides an updraft to waft away in a gentle breeze. Ssssson-ofagun.
Our hero climbs back up the gulch to the logging road. Now the grade is
easy again. A lazy zephyr drys the sweat on his brow, and a chipmunk complains at his passage. The sun is warm on his back. The reader's eyes start to glaze.
Oself checks out the view from an outcropping when tiny
puffs blossom at his feet, sprouting sprays of rock shards. Say what? A rifle crack echos in the mountain air. And again. Holy excrement--or whatever--someone is shooting at him. Oself dives for cover and lands in a rocky gulch, bashing his knee.
Oh darn. And breaking his elbow. Oh pshaw. And loose stones send him sliding down an escalator to hell. Egad gazooks.
Weeeell, you get the picture. All of this up and down is to get our readers to buy deeper and
deeper into Oself's future, to grit their teeth in determination to hang with him till jour ney's end. Compare this to a Humvee driving up in third gear.
The mountain line is a metaphor for all plots. As we men tioned
earlier, Oself must continually face downturns and over come them, growing stronger each time, mentally if not physi cally, till at last he's ready for the big finale, the mountain- top climax we have targeted from the
beginning.
But before that, in BookMarc #12, we have one more thing to do before the denouement, the final outcome. How's this for leaving you in suspense?
Copyright Peter E. Abresch BookMarc February 13,
1998
To finally conclude our journey up Plot-line
Mountain, all the ups and downs and sufferings, we are ready for the denoue ment, or the big finale. But before we do that, we want to ease off a bit. We want things to finally appear to all be going Oself's way. This is a set up. It might even seem
formalistic. But it really makes the finale that much more satisfying for the reader, which is really what we're all about.
Okay, Oself has broken out of the trees and brush and bram bles. Only a fifty-foot grassy
slope awaits him till the sum mit, where there's a helicopter, ready to whisk him to safety, wine, women, and song. The sun is shining. The air is clear. The birds are singing. Everyone can relax. Oself has it made.
Ten feet up the slope, out jumps a ten thousand pound griz zly. Carrying a rifle. The one that's been shooting at him. A great altercation takes place where there is weeping and gnash ing of teeth--talk about Cliche City--as well as kicking and
clawing and punching and pinching, till finally, ta da, our stout-hearted Oself miraculously, but logically, folks, always logically, overcomes Gladys, the cross-eyed bear, who turns out to be a misunderstood fugitive from the Disneyland zoo. Alter
natively, Oself could lose but gain great insight, like how the inside of a bear looks. We're not like those phony Hollywood guys; we can take the tough endings.
You see, by easing off a bit, it makes the final confronta
tion more vivid. If a thunderstorm slips in on a cloudy day, who notices? But have the sun suddenly blackened by an anvil cloud and you've made an impression. Remember when we talked of Dean Koontz's monster in "Tick Tock?" Well, near the book's end
the hero reaches the safe house. It's almost morning when the monster will die. Hero is home-free. But guess who comes knocking at the door?
So that's it. Once the climax is over, get out. "Oself rides off into the
sunset." Over with. Don't drag it out. "Oself stopped at Aunt Martha's for a piece of blueberry pie, washed his horse, polished his boots, and rode off into the sunset, meeting a blond with a figure like a brick excrement house, whereupon he altered
his destination for Cliche City."
Got the picture?
I think we need one last caution. The ending has to be satisfying. Happy or sad, even inconclusive, the ending should leave the reader
satisfied he made the journey with you. Fail to do that and the next time out, you might journey alone. For instance, I read a book once where a Bad Guy destroyed every thing Hero had at the beginning, made Hero do his bidding throughout the book, near
the end Hero got Bad Guy's money, hoo rah, but in the very end, Bad Guy got away scot-free and Hero got zilch. I know what the writer was doing, building things up for the last of his trilogy. But the ending didn't satisfy me, and if the author left me
swinging in the wind once, why journey again? As a teacher of mine, David Hoof--Blind Man's Bluff-- liked to point out, You make a contract with the first sentence of your book. Better make sure you keep it at the end.
I think that's everything I know about plotting. There might be some things to say about handling different kinds of stories, but I think I'll let that rest for now as we prepare to take up the second leg of our writing tripod, characterization, in
BookMarc #13.
Copyright Peter E. Abresch BookMarc February 13, 1998
The time has come, the walrus
said, to speak of character ization, the second leg of our writing-tripod of plot, charac terization, and writing/rewriting.
In some ways characterization should probably be placed before plot. A lot of writers work on
characterization before they do anything. They find out who their characters are, put them in a place of confrontation, and see how they react. Nothing wrong with that. It allows us to add a character's bits and pieces as we go
along.
I work on characterization after I finish the first draft. I used to think I was alone in approaching it this way, but after making an unscientific poll, I've concluded it's about half and half. The British
writer, John Braine, ROOM AT THE TOP, advocated this approach. As I work with my characters, see what they do and try figure out why, I keep a file of things that pop up about each one--an irregular speech pattern, a bird watching hobby, a love of
food--so I already know a lot about them before I start developing their background.
I believe it depends on whether your mind is character- oriented or plot-oriented. Are you writing this story because you visualize a
few characters that you'd like to know? What happens when Waldo meets Emerson? Or do you visualize your story starting from a situation? What would happen if a guy woke up to find himself in Paris? In 1840? On a hot air balloon? I think literary
writers generally work out their characters first, action writers hang in until after the first draft. Just a guess.
Either way, like death and taxes, we have to we have to work out the development of our characters. If
we can't make them seem real, our story will never seem real. Remember Oself, our other self? Unless we develop life-like characters with hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, how can we elicit an Oself response in our readers? If we draw
cardboard characters that no one can identify with, who will care what happens to them?
What's our reaction if we hear an old time movie star has died? Probably a big ho-hum.
But suppose
that star had stopped and talked to us? Suppose we meet her again, tell her some of our life experiences and hear some of hers? That she was orphaned at four, shuffled from house to house, waited tables to earn money for acting lessons, and that men
treated her badly before her big break. We identify with her ups and downs, admire her tenacity, and swap jokes and laughter along with our stories. Now we know her. Now she is a friend. Then we find she has been murdered.
What is our reaction now? Shock. Disbelief. Rage. Loss. And maybe we'll cry.
That's the reaction we want from our readers, folks. That's the difference between cardboard characters
and those with substance. Between ho-hum and an Oself response. And that's what will plug readers into our writing, and what will keep them coming back like a long-time friend.
We'll investigate some ways to do that in
BookMarc #14
Copyright Peter E. Abresch BookMarc February 13, 1998
